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Pictures of old Comic stands
Yoc:
Depending on the date of those EC letters, another likely explanation was EC was public enemy #1 to distributors and retailers by the end. Many bundles were never sent out or were returned unopened. Gaines' testimony financially shot himself in the foot. It was extremely lucky that he was convinced to turn Mad into a magazine thus avoiding the comics code entirely while remaining a successful publisher.
Drusilla lives!:
Sorry to disagree with you here Yoc, but I think this was a problem for EC way before Wertham started targeting them. In fact, just recently... about two months ago... I started reading through the entire HofF run, and this stuff starts to pop up in the letters page as early as the 7th issue (the May-June 1951 issue). I suspect it had nothing really to do with news dealers or Wertham at this time... just the squeeze of a huge number of imitators flooding the market with similarly named titles. It's this last interesting tidbit that brings me back to the significance of those "alpha" racks.
As far as being public enemy #1... look at those pictures, particularly of the one with the child in front of those racks... keep in mind that there were over 200 titles being published EACH month. Now consider EC, they had perhaps ten titles, which were published bimonthly... that is, in any given month there were only five EC comics on the rack among 195 others... and yes, they were successful titles, but they weren't high profile ones like Superman or Batman. It truly astonishes me that they were considered such a threat to the public, when you probably couldn't even FIND them in all that mess. :)
Remember, the newsstand dealers were complaining about comics in general... and in particular, the number of comics they felt they HAD to handle or else... that was the whole "tie-in" issue that lengthened the 54 hearings. It's my opinion that what these news dealers and distributers disliked was having to handle 200+ titles a month... and looking at those photos could you blame them? They were angry, and they conflated the issue for there own reasons IMO... and yes, there were too many horror titles, but to them (IMO) there were too many titles period, regardless of genre or publisher. And from the hearing transcripts, I don't recall anyone asking them which publisher was the most troublesome... it was the industry as a whole that they (the news dealers) had a problem with.
darkmark (RIP):
Does anybody have dreams related to old comics stores? Sometimes I dream of a second-hand place in my old hometown that sold comics for a nickel. Other times, I dream of finding great comics stores in Dallas with old friends, and upon waking, I'm left wondering if those places existed or not.
Drusilla lives!:
Yeah, now that I think about it... yes.
As a kid I use to have a fear of being accused of loitering around the comic racks simply to ogle the adult mags... I should add that in several candy/smoke shops they were usually placed in the racks, or facing upward on a bottom shelf just under the racks, near the comics. The ones in the racks would be separated from the comic books by a "buffer zone" of magazines like National Lampoon, Heavy Metal and of course, the Warren mags. But they were always (uncomfortably) close IMO and I was always aware and wary of them, the adults that came by to look at them, and of how long I spent looking for a particular book... comic book, that is.
I think as a result of these early experiences, for awhile (in my teens) I think I recall having a recurring dream of being tossed out of a candy store in front of everybody (strangers) for looking at the adult magazines while all I really was looking for was a comic book.
Btw, this never really happened in real life.
And now that I think about it, it's also why I never bought a Vampirella either. :P
Drusilla lives!:
Btw, I just came across this interesting site on POP, SOTI and lots more!
LostSOTI.org
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